Hi, I'm Marco. I'm a researcher investigating the cognitive underpinnings of decision-making and social networks.
I'm bridging cognitive sciences and their focus on the individual with sociology and its aggregated dynamics.
I'm also developing new research methods (experimental and ecological) combining classical psychometrics, advanced data science, AI, and LLMs.
20+ papers, 40+ coautors, 3 awards, 8 universities, 3 countries...
Decisions are never made in isolation. Social information, the decision frame, and many more features influence how people resolve trade-offs and what falls into their utility function.
With a mix of economic theory and experimental manipulations, my research investigates the social and cognitive underpinnings of decision-making.
Society is arranged in a densely interconnected network with a peculiar small-world structure. This stucture is the results of people actively navigating the social environment with specific search information patterns guided by different motives. The sampling approach allows us understand tie formation, social groups segregation, the spreading of misinformation, and more.
LLMs can be used as an in-vitro test bench to address a few important research questions. They learn by trial and error, just like us. Their neurons get connected according to Hebbian learning, just like ours. Although they are only surrogates of the human mind, investigating LLMs cognitive alignement with human cognition will inform research on both AI and cognitive sicences.
I'm a methodologist by vocation and I teach both classical psychometrics and advanced data science courses. In my research, I develop new empirical paradigms and analytical methods suited for lab settings and real world scenarios. Recently, I moved toward the social media sphere and I slowly drifted into the dark side of Bayesian Statistics.
In my career, I have had the good fortune of working with three amazing scholars. In 2017, I visited Christian Unkelbach's group at the Social Cognition Center Cologne during my PhD.
After graduating in 2019, my first postdoc position was within Mandy Hütter's group at the University of Tübingen.
And after that, I joined Klaus Fiedler's lab at the Heidelberg University.
But the entire journey began in 2015 at the University of Milan - BICOCCA, where I obtained my Ph.D. in Psychology, Linguistic, and Cognitive Neurosciences in 2019. Since then, I enjoyed a great deal of international mobility, living, teaching, and doing research at eight universities, in seven cities, spread across three countries.
The current stop is the Basel Behavioral Research Center within the Behavioral Marketing (Brendl) group at the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel. In this last part of my journey, I managed to publish 11 papers (and counting), ontain 1 award, and assemble 2 symposia. Not bad for three years of work.
Biella, M., & Batzdorfer, V. (2026). Editorial: The phenomenon of misinformation in different domains and by various disciplines. Frontiers in Psychology.
Biella, M., & Hütter, M. (2026). Navigating the Social Environment: A Sampling Approach to Trustworthiness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Biella, M., Gemignani, A., Conversano, C., Miniati, M., & Orrù, G. (2025). Psychometric Assessment of the Italian Version of the Vaccination Attitudes Examination (VAX) Scale and Exploration of its Link with Policy Endorsement. Collabra: Psychology.
Biella, M., Hennig, M., & Oswald, L. (2025). Investigating the Social Boundaries of Fairness by Modeling Ultimatum Game Responders’ Decisions with Multinomial Processing Tree Models. Games.
Rebholz, T., Biella, M., & Hütter, M. (2024). Mixed-Effects Regression Weights for Advice Taking and Related Phenomena of Information Sampling and Utilization. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
Biella, M., Rebholz, T., Holthausen, M., & Hütter, M. (2023). The Interaction Game: Development and Validation of an Experimental Paradigm for Manipulating Social Distance. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
Biella, M., Orrù, G., Ciacchini, R., Conversano, C., Marazziti, D., & Gemignani A. (2023). Anti-vaccination attitude and vaccination intentions against COVID-19: a retrospective cross-sectional study investigating the role of media consumption. Clinical Neuropsychiatry.
Batzdorfer, V., Steinmetz, H., Biella, M., & Alizadeh, M. (2021). Conspiracy theories on Twitter: emerging motifs and temporal dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Data Science and Analytics.
Biella, M., & Sacchi, S. (2018). Not fair but acceptable... for us! Group membership influences the tradeoff between equality and utility in the ultimatum game. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Anzani, A., Biella, M., Prunas, A., Baldissarri, C., & Spaccatini, F. (2025). The call of the wolfpack. How social attraction toward the harasser complements ambivalent sexism in inducing empathic failure with the victim of stranger harassment. Sexuality & Culture.
Pavanello Decaro, S., Pessina, R., Biella, M., & Prunas, A. (2024). Italian women who have sex with women: prevalence and co-occurrence of sexual practices. Sexual Medicine.
Catellani, P., Biella, M., Carfora, V., Nardone, A., Brischigiaro, L., Manera, M.R. & Piastra, M. (2023). A theory-based and data-driven approach to promoting physical activity through message-based interventions. Frontiers in Psychology.
Frisanco, A., Biella, M., Brambilla, M., & Kret, M. E. (2023). All that meets the eye: The contribution of reward processing and pupil mimicry on pupillary reactions to facial trustworthiness. Current Psychology.
Carfora, V., Biella, M., & Catellani, P. (2022). Affective Components in Promoting Physical Activity: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Message Framing. Frontiers in Psychology.
Anzani, A., Biella, M., Scandurra, C., & Prunas, A. (2022). Desire for Genital Surgery in Trans Masculine Individuals: The Role of Internalized Transphobia, Transnormativity and Trans Positive Identity. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Frisanco, A., Biella, M., Brambilla, M., & Kret, M. E. (2021). All that meets the eye: The contribution of reward processing and pupil mimicry on pupillary reactions to facial trustworthiness. Current Psychology.
Pagliaro, S., …, Biella, M., et al. (2021). Trust predicts COVID-19 prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions in 23 countries. PLOS ONE.
Brambilla, M., Masi, M., Mattavelli, S., & Biella, M. (2021). Faces and sounds becoming one: Cross-modal integration of facial and auditory cues in judging trustworthiness. Social Cognition.
Orrù, G., Bertelloni, D., Diolaiuti, F., Mucci, F., Di Giuseppe, M., Biella, M., Gemignani, A., Ciacchini, R. & Conversano, C. (2021). Long-COVID Syndrome? A Study on the Persistence of Neurological, Psychological and Physiological Symptoms. Healthcare.
Brambilla, M., Biella, M., & Kret, M. (2019). The power of pupils in predicting conforming behavior. Social Influence.
Brambilla, M., Biella, M., & Kret, M. (2019). Looking into Your Eyes: Approach and Avoidance Responses are Modulated by Pupillary Signals. Cognition and Emotion.
Brambilla, M., Biella, M., & Freeman J. (2018). The Influence of Visual Context on the Evaluation of Facial Trustworthiness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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